


A Brand New Part

by Toxic_Waste



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Entrapdak, Entrapta is Entrapta and always has been, Gen, Hordak is caught off guard and he doesn't like it, If you read between the lines, Oblivious Entrapta (She-Ra), One Shot, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21605947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toxic_Waste/pseuds/Toxic_Waste
Summary: Nothing is so good that it never requires improvement, of this, Entrapta is very certain. Hordak tries very hard to remain impassive about it.Set vaguely in middle of Season Three somewhere.
Relationships: Entrapta & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 116





	A Brand New Part

It all happened so quickly. Then again, _most_ things happened quickly when Entrapta was involved, so Hordak didn’t feel too surprised by that part. He’d rather… come to expect it by now.

It had been an impulse, really – he’d hardly even been paying attention to his movements, only meaning to catch her notice by laying a hand on her shoulder she whizzed by. Unfortunately, he’d misjudged her height, not realizing that she was swinging from rafter to rafter to cross the room, and his hand closed around her calf instead.

That was where the surprises began, but far from where they ended. He’d only barely had time to register at all that he was, indeed, holding onto the wrong part of her body when it came clean off in his hand, and his – Entrapta sailed past without, stopping abruptly with some exclamation as she turned back.

Hordak had frozen, at first, terrible fear of what he done seizing him– but Entrapta’s face bore only confusion, not pain. And then he realized that what he held in his grasp felt not like the spongy, fibrous cushioning that came with the swaths of hair on his lab partner’s body, nor yet the warm, slightly squishy feeling of flesh and blood.

It was… hard. Hard and firm, unyielding – as if it had been made from stone, Although, in retrospect, it was much lighter than all that, too.

“What happened there?” Entrapta asked, raising her eyebrows. “Did I bonk you? Well, whoops. Though I think I should probably take that back.” She extended her hand, pointing, and Hordak obeyed as one in a daze – giving the woman back her… leg?

At last, he found his voice, even as she stared at him.

“It’s not organic,” he bit out, his tone perhaps a little thicker and more gravelly than normal.

Entrapta looked up at him, puzzled. “Well, of course it’s not!” she exclaimed, grinning.

The entrails that his eyes had deceived him into perceiving hanging out her loose pant leg resolved as he blinked his eyes - resolved into more of the writhing purple mass that seemed to grow out of every available orifice in her body. The tendrils of her hair snaked out the bottom of her pant leg and gently reached out, wrapping about one end of the metal object and pulling it free from his grip.

The hairs retracted into her pant leg, pulling the metal along with it, until the both of them had entirely disappeared into the darkness, and all that could be seen was the bottom of her shoe again. A faint clicking of some kind echoed in Hordak’s ears, and she began wiggling her toes.

She seemed pleased by the result, judging by her smile.

“The appearances are deceiving”, Hordak spoke, his tone careful, his words clipped and short. None of the internal surprise dared show itself on his face. Still, there was one thing he couldn’t just _let_ be – though it, at least, was something slightly more appropriate for someone like him to be involved in.

Because that was his relationship with Entrapta, after all – an appropriate one.

“You are the Fright Zone’s chief scientist and engineer,” he said gruffly. “Any who dares to assault you is directly threatening our military success. They will be punished at once.”

Entrapta blinked, puzzled. She stopped examining her own leg, staring up at him. Then understanding dawned over her face. “Oh, no, don’t worry – this is from _ages_ ago anyway! It’s really not a big deal. I don’t mind.” She grinned. “How many years has it been? I – well, I don’t remember, but it’s been lots!”

“I… see,” Hordak returned, feeling secretly relieved. His inner mind conjured up an image of Entrapta – an Entrapta ‘lots’ younger, suffering, bleeding, assaulted by some unknown force. His hackles lifted subconsciously, and he quickly decided it was because he was just _that_ devoted to the Horde’s military success. “Well, in that case…” he paused, not sure where he was going with the statement. In what case? Was exactly was he hinging on that being the case? “…any who assaulted you is an utter fool. You shall describe them, and if, by chance, we meet on the battlefield, it shall be their final day of reckoning.” He finished as haughtily as possible.

Yes, that was good – and it was subtle, too.

Entrapta shook her head, giggling. “Oh, no one attacked me. Who would do that anyway?” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter – I was the one who did it, actually.”

“What?”

Hordak’s ears twitched as he realized he’d entirely forgotten to maintain his air of uninterest. He quickly smoothed his expression and prayed to Prime that the woman in front of him hadn’t noticed it.

It didn’t seem like she had – or if she had, she wasn’t saying anything about it.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, instead, holding up her palms and grinning. “It’s a long story, actually – you see-”

* * *

Entrapta frowned, studying her workbench and her assorted tools. Everything seemed to be in order, just according to her liking. She raised her tape recorder to her mouth and clicked it.

“Log #493, Bio-Electrical Engineering Experiment Two. I’ve devised a plan to field-test my theories! With the data I collect today, I’ll be able to put several theories to the test, and also hopefully farther my current understanding of the nervous system. The more I can map, the better I can replicate it for my friends. But the key to a good copy is to study the original _really_ hard, and that’s what we’re doing today. It’s like a birthday present to myself! Happy twelfth birthday, me.”

Clicking off the recorder, she sat it aside. Shifting about, she hauled her left leg up and onto the table, then reached over to retrieve a handsaw from where it’d been hanging over an open burner for the last three hours. The blade glowed red-hot in the small basement room, sterilized to a perfectly acceptable degree.

Humming ‘Happy Birthday’ quietly to herself, Entrapta bit her tongue, positioned the sawteeth, and shoved it in as vigorously as she could.

* * *

“Hmm, I guess it really wasn’t that long of a story after all,” Entrapta mused. “Ah well!” She shrugged, grinning still. “I still remember that experiment. It was such a resounding success. I dissected it later that day and was able to study the nerves inside way more in-depth than I’d been able before.” She tapped her temple. “They’re all electrical, you know. And the brain! It’s a very important part of building good AIs – like Emily! They all need a functioning nervous system to let them experience the world.” She paused. “Well, it’s a bit more complex than all that, but there is certainly still plenty to compare between them – lots of similarities, on a small scale. What do you know about synapses?”

Hordak, for his part, could do naught but blink and hope that Entrapta couldn’t tell how utterly baffled he was. Although he would have still denied ever having been in one… in his deepest heart of of hearts, he wondered if this – this feeling – might not be what a ‘tizzy’ felt like after all.

“And, then, of course, I can’t have just _one_ leg!” Entrapta continued, beaming. “Well, I can, actually, and I did for a while, because at first I thought the lesser weight would be helpful! But it turned out that it really unbalanced me when I was trying to swing around. I was going to cut off the other to make it even, but I decided to do this instead.” Swinging herself around, she lowered in Hordak’s vision until her feet finally touched the floor again. “I mean, you’ve gotta admit this is just objectively cooler, right? It does just about everything my old one did, and then some – like never getting tired. It’s fused directly with my nervous system so I can control it with my brain, _and_ it easily comes off for repairs or upgrades! I even got it to run DOOM.” She began wiggling her toes again, more vigorously this time. “Being fused with my nerve endings, it taps directly into my natural brain processes and runs alongside my own nervous system. It’s really a part of me! What more could you ask from a leg?”

“That it… serve me well?” Hordak echoed slowly. He’d never really thought about ‘asking’ anything of his legs in particular – or any of his body parts. He had cursed them a few times, though, on the days his defects flared up so bad that he would often have to struggle for hours in a pool of sweat and agony to even get out of bed. Those days had been lesss frequent, though, after Entrapta had built him that new set of armor.

It _enhanced_ his natural frame, she had said, as weak and frail as it could be at times. It worked with his body, not in spite of it. He could control it with his mind and she had told him it… tapped into his natural… brain processes, running alongside his own nervous system in a way that let it function more like an extension of his own frame than something that merely covered it.

Hordak frowned, and his left ear flicked. “Entrapta,” he said smoothly. “I… I would like to ask you something.”


End file.
